AI can generate almost anything. The question is whether it's
slowly erasing what makes you... you.
Have You Become Harder To Recognise?
This week, in our WhatsApp community, Thought Leaders Living Room, one of our daily questions was deceptively simple.
"What's one business skill you believe will become essential over the next five years... and why?"
The responses were fascinating.
"Selling: because when AI makes execution free, the only skill left with pricing power is getting a human to say yes."
- Ms Kim
" In the AI era, everyone can have a well-written speech, post or pitch. So the difference will be how we deliver it."
- Ewa Ledeboer
"Human skills. Discernment. Having empathy, being convincing, being compassionate, conveying and transferring emotions, telling stories, leading by example, how we build trust..."
- Dr Hatem Goucha
"I'd say when it comes down to one thing: being aware of what you're energetically radiating out into the world... your ability to stabilise, align and stand in your own power."
- Fiona Maguire
A couple of days later, Azizah sent me an article from The Drum featuring The Economist's latest advertising campaign.
Authetic Intelligence.
I found myself going back to those two words again and again.
Not because they answered our question.
Because they made me wonder whether we'd been asking the wrong one.
When Better Isn't Always Better
The more I thought about those two words, the more I realised this wasn't really about artificial intelligence.
It was about us.
Every day, millions of people ask AI to write an email, improve a proposal, rewrite a LinkedIn post or polish a presentation. More and more, we're asking it to sound like 'us'. To match our tone. To write in our style. To make us appear clearer, smarter and more professional.
There's nothing wrong with that.
The problem isn't using AI.
The problem is forgetting what people recognised about us in the first place.
If you're never worried about perfect grammar in conversation, why has ever email suddenly become flawless?
If you're known for being direct, why do your messages suddenly sound like they've been approved by a corporate communications team?
If your friends, colleagues or clients wouldn't recognise your writing without your name at the bottom, have you improved it... or simply changed it?
That was the question I couldn't get out of my head.
Not whether AI is becoming more human.
Whether we're becoming a little less ourselves.
AI Is The Tool. You Are The Difference.
AI is one the most powerful tools we've ever been given. It can help us think faster, communicate more clearly, organise our ideas and remove hours of repetitive work. Used well, it makes us better.
That's exactly what it should do.
The danger isn't that AI writes for you. The danger is that it starts writing everyone the same way.
The more AI helps us sound professionally similar, the more deliberate we have to be about remaining personally recognisable.
